Annette Tolson

My aunt Annette Tolson, who has died aged 82, questioned conventional expectations throughout her life. At 80, she wore out a younger companion when they went cycling and camping on Dartmoor.

Sleeping under the stars had been one of her greatest pleasures since she hitch-hiked across America in 1949 at the age of 25, travelling alone and camping in orchards with hobos and migrant workers. She travelled with a sleeping bag, a portable typewriter and a fruit-picking map. At times she teamed up with her younger sister Bridget, but they found that hitch-hiking alone got them to their destinations more quickly.

Her letters home told the stories of many of those she met on the road. Some of these had been displaced by the economic upheavals of the time, others, like her, were enjoying a life of freedom and adventure in the American west. Sexual innocence protected her, she later said, in many risky situations: she was too curious to be frightened. Years later, she castigated her daughter for hesitating before hitch-hiking alone across England.

Fearless and tireless, Annette earned her living picking grapes, tomatoes, apples and cotton, with short spells panning for gold in Oregon and selling dictionaries in San Francisco. Her inner journey led her to the Essene school of life, a New Age community in Mexico, where she tried but failed to fall under the spell of a mysterious Hungarian guru, Professor Szekele. Spiritual quests continued throughout her life; she trod a wavering line between a naive delight in the unorthodox and an earthy good sense that enabled her to root herself securely in her home in Bath and her fertile allotment.

On her return from America in 1951 she married Nigel Tolson, an architect, with whom she shared over half a century of conversation, criticism and laughter. While bringing up her family, her interests included organic farming and horticulture, counselling, the women's movement and alternative lifestyles.

Their children each inherited aspects of her fiercely independent outlook. Private property was of little regard to her, and her children were forced to accompany her on many raiding expeditions, chased sometimes by indignant land-owners or bulls, and to share a place in her car with large oozing piles of manure. In later years her zest for new friendships and ideas remained as strong as in her youth, when she was brought up by her mother, following the sudden death of her father. She and her sister studied at home, and then at Oxford University.

At her funeral, her four children carried her in a basket, adorned with vegetables she had grown herself, to the grave where family and friends took turns to shovel in the earth she loved.

They, her grandchildren and her husband survive her.

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